


The Briar Patch

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Methuselah's Children [5]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: Nile needs to choose whether to let herself be listed KIA, or to tell her family the truth. Nicky and Joe want to show her something before she makes her decision, if only to add a little more perspective to her situation.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Methuselah's Children [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811
Comments: 53
Kudos: 702





	The Briar Patch

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S NOT AN ANGST FEST THIS TIME!

Nile hasn’t touched the beer she ordered. Outside, she watches Andy break the news to Booker. Watches how he embraces her and how they whisper their goodbyes. Nicky has joined her in sober solidarity, his drink weeping and going flat as they wait. He’s also looking toward Booker, his fingers playing with the paper straw wrapper absentmindedly. He folds it over and over itself, then reverses the process, straining it to its limits. Nile doesn’t know him well enough to tell if it’s a normal habit. To know if he is generally the type of person whose fingers can’t sit still. She suspects, however, that he’s not. 

Joe had moved to sit next to Nicky when Andy left. He's now keeping Nicky boxed in the booth. One arm is wrapped around Nicky’s shoulders and he’s steadfastly _not_ looking out the window. He’s drinking his beer at a slow steady pace that promises to end the glass in moments. Nile isn’t even remotely surprised when he takes Nicky’s and starts working on that too. 

“Andy gave you back the phone,” Nicky said suddenly. She jumps, though she shouldn’t have. He hadn’t been loud. Hadn’t been abrupt. She just hadn’t expected him to speak to her. He’s still looking out toward Booker and Andy. He could almost have been talking _too_ them, his attention is so focused. But contextually, it had to be her. She licks her lips. 

“Yeah...yeah she did. She tell you?” 

“No.” He doesn’t elaborate, though he needn’t have to. Nile grimaces. Considering where he’s looking, she doubts he’d missed her talking to Booker about it earlier. _Obviously._ “Wait before you tell Copley to end your life.” 

“You read lips?” she asks, just to be contrary. 

“Yes.” He finally turns away from Booker and Andy. Little wonder why, both are embracing on the pier. It’s a tender moment meant for them. Nile breaks away too, meeting Nicky’s eyes. 

Nile cups her hands around her beer. The moisture is soothing, though the chill does send a shiver through her arms. Quietly, she admits: “I don’t want to end up like Booker.”

“There’s a lot of space between talking to your family and selling the rest of us out to a psychopath for medical research,” Joe hisses, slamming Nicky’s empty glass onto the table. Nile doesn’t jump this times, but it’s a near thing. She sets her jaw and stares Joe down. He doesn’t notice. He’s scanning the restaurant, arm tight around Nicky’s shoulders. Nicky shifts to settle in at Joe’s side, as if Joe’s fingers weren’t bleached white from how firm his grip is. 

“All right.” It’s an easy point to concede, but it doesn’t address the key problems of the argument. The ones Booker laid out so clearly. The things that Andy murmured, in haunting detail. She doesn’t want to see her mom and brother turn on her. She doesn’t want them to hate her. If it’s easier for them...easier for _her..._ shouldn’t she do the right thing and just let them grieve? 

“The final choice is yours,” Nicky says. “But...I want to show you something first...if you don’t mind.” 

It takes her a moment to realize that it’s a genuine offer. She’s not being commanded to follow, not being told what her next steps are. She’s simply being given a chance. She can decide yes or no if it’s the right thing for her. The mere possibility of agency after being jerked around feels _good._ “All right,” Nile concedes. She finally takes a sip of her beer. “Show me what you got.” 

* * *

It takes a few days before Nicky can arrange his presentation. They’re staying in London during that time and so Nile occupies herself with going to museums and picking up history books on the crusades, Scythia, and the Napoleonic wars. She even picks up a geological survey of the waters around the UK, just because. Joe eyes them when she comes back from the store, snorting and rolling his eyes as if it’s amusing. 

“You could always ask us,” he says. 

“I will,” she promises. “But I want to know what’s out there first.” 

He holds up his hands and makes no move to argue. “What’d you get?” She shows him. Humming thoughtfully he fishes an old receipt from his pocket and snags a pen from a dish by the door. He scribbles something in handwriting that looks far too messy to have been a thousand years old, then hands the receipt to her. 

“The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf?” she reads.

“A different perspective,” he offers. “There’s an Al-jazeera documentary as well. By the way, Nicky and I would like to take you out to dinner tomorrow, and show you something after. Does that work for you?” 

“Sure, I got no plans tomorrow night.” 

“Excellent. Enjoy your books.” He leaves her to it, but the books feel so much heavier now. Adjusting her hold, she trudges them up to her bedroom and sets them down. Then, she turns and heads back to the bookshop. They _do_ have Maalouf’s book, and it’s shorter than the other one she’d gotten. 

She stays up reading it all night, ignoring Joe’s bright smile when he sees it by pulling it up over her eyes. When she’s halfway through, though, she can’t help but look toward where Nicky is sprawled on the couch. He’s got one leg up on Joe’s lap. His back is resting on Andy’s shoulder. They’re watching a soccer game on TV (“Football,” Joe insisted, “Please there are so many languages to remember. Please, for this one, _football.”)_ and they’re cheering on whoever has the ball with no concept of team loyalty. 

A thousand years from now she wonders how her participation in the middle east will be viewed, through some new immortal’s eyes. She hopes they see her as she sees Nicky and Joe: human. Flawed, but human. 

Come morning, the book is done and she has a crick in her neck. She thanks Joe for the rec before heading off on a brisk run by the river. He waves goodbye and shouts something to Andy that has her laughing loud enough to be heard from the street. This, more than anything, has been what’s kept Nile going lately. She doesn’t know if she’d really have stuck around if every day was a kidnapping or rescue mission. It’d just be too damn much. But Booker was right in the end. It isn’t always grenades in the doorway and running for the door. Sometimes it’s just laughter and good food. 

When evening falls, she’s ready for Nicky’s mystery to be resolved. He and Joe don’t take her anywhere particularly fancy for dinner. They sit at a pub and have fish and chips. They actually drink their beer this time and they make mild small talk with her for the better part of half an hour. It’s almost nice. If it weren’t for the anticipation, Nile could have said it was a really nice night actually. 

But she’s never been fond of waiting. She wanted answers days ago, and despite being army trained in ‘Hurry up and Wait’ she never liked it. “Why’d you tell me not to ask Copley to take care of my stuff?” she asks after their dinner’s been served and they’re getting their hands good and greasy in some choice haddock.

If she was being honest, she didn’t really think she’d get an answer. She thought Nicky would tell her to wait until whatever he wanted to show her. But he does answer. He wipes his mouth with his napkin and takes a sip of his beer to clear his throat. “We had kids,” he says. 

It’s startling enough that she drops her fish. She stares at him dumbly. _“What?”_

Joe clears his throat. He looks smarmily guilty of something, and when he starts off it really doesn’t sound good. “Every few centuries or so, we happen to be in the right place and the right time—” 

“—For an accidental baby acquisition?” 

Nicky snorts loudly. He presses one hand to his lips. It looks like he’s trying to keep from laughing harder, but Joe outright stares at her. He flounders. He looks so tragic she almost lets him off the hook for it, but Nicky presses onwards. “They were never _babies._ The youngest were ten.” 

Nile is wondering if she really wants to know where this story is going. Afterall, there’s no doubt in her mind that these children are all dead. She entertains a vague thought of military raised spy-kids, hates the very idea of it, and really hopes that it hadn’t been like that at all. “All right. So you somehow acquired children. And what happened?” 

“Nothing _happened._ They were children, they grew old, they died. They lived like humans live, it is as simple as that.” And yet, they’re telling her this away from Andy. They’re telling her this right before wanting to take her to see something. She isn’t exactly enjoying the picture they’re painting in the least. 

Joe sighs. He rotates the ring on his finger twice. Then he takes a deep breath. “There are people, like Copley, who do understand. Who...are willing to keep things secret. The kids kept our secret. They never let on what they knew.”

“And?” 

“And they lived well. We weren’t always with them. Sometimes it wasn’t even for that long. We’d take them from one situation to the other.” Joe casts a quick glance to Nicky. “We just helped. Where we could. That’s all it is. Sometimes it wasn’t good enough, and they died from sickness far younger than we’d have liked. But then...there were those we got to see grow old. And they died happy. They didn’t beg us to save them. They didn’t blame us for our immortality. They just accepted it was their time.”

There was something deep in Nile’s chest that feels like it’d been released at that. Like icy fingers had finally melted and relinquished the grip they’d held on her heart. Her shoulders slump forward. She picks at her fish and chips. Thinking. Just thinking. 

She doesn’t want her mother or brother to worry. She wants them to be okay. “If they think I’m out doing all this stuff...they’ll be upset.” 

“They were not upset you joined the marines?” Nicky asks gently. 

“That’s different?” 

“Why?” Joe this time. They trade back and forth like the rise and fall of the ocean. Capturing her in their tide. “Your father died in the military. Why would it be different for them?” 

She doesn’t have a good answer. She eats a chip and tries to come up with one. All she sees is Booker, and Booker’s pain. They release her to her musing. She eats the rest of her meal in silence, and they pay when she’s done. 

When they get in the car, she tries to keep track of where they’re going, but all she knows is that it’s out of London. The silence that fills the car is the comfortable kind. They let her mull over what they told her, and she _does_ mull. She rolls it about over and over, trying to come up with an answer and getting nothing concrete. 

By the time the car stops, she’s only worked herself into a headache. No answer had magically appeared. She feels like a failure. Still, she opens the car door and steps onto the drive of a nicely maintained little cottage. The exterior is old. Old enough to have been built in the 15th century if her eyes are plotting it right. There’s been maintenance, however. She can see the modern touches that have graced the home. She can tell where things have broken or worn down and been touched up to make it whole once more. 

“Where are we?” she asks them. 

“Richard called it the Briar Patch and so we’ve called it that ever since,” Nicky replies. He curls his fingers, still holding the car keys to his palm, and gestures for her to follow. “Come.” They go to the door and Nicky unlocks it with a perfectly modern key. They step inside and he flicks a light switch. 

They kept the old iron frame chandelier that used to run off of candles, but it’s wired now. Light fills the main chamber and Nile gasps when she sees paintings and housekeeping items that belong to centuries past. She spins in a circle, looking at books in the bookshelves and the carvings on the furniture. 

There are plenty of portraits in the house, but perhaps the most telling is one of Nicky and Joe sitting in front of two young men. They are blonde with ghost pale skin. Both wear black, and they stand to the side of the chaise where children usually stand by their parents in these kinds of portraits. The mother and father at each other’s side, surrounded by their young. “Joe painted us first,” Nicky reveals quietly. “He used a mirror to add himself in later...I sat in so he could get the shape of the body on the chaise.” 

_“You_ painted this?” Nile asks. It’s beautiful. The blondes have been caught in the prime of their life. Perhaps they just reached their twenties. They had lost their baby fat, but still didn’t have the strong features of true adults. They were still delicate and fine. 

“I’ve had many years to learn how to paint,” Joe demures. They crowd around the portrait. “Do you recognize them?” he asks her then. 

_“Recognize_ them?” She feels like a parrot, but she can’t quite tell what she’s meant to say to any of this. She squints at the blondes and tries to come up with something, but paintings aren’t like pictures. Personal liberties can always be taken, and even if they hadn’t been—she hardly knows every fifteenth century blonde in history. 

“Perhaps instead, you’ll remember a story,” Nicky suggests. “There was once a man who wanted very much to be king. So much so, that when his brother died leaving behind two young heirs to the throne, he had them interred in a tower and declared himself the ruler of all the lands. Then, one evening, both boys vanished without a trace. It’s believed their uncle murdered them, but there’s no evidence. No one knows where the boys went. They were simply...” he snaps. “Gone.” 

“Edward the...fourth? and...Richard? _These_ are the Princes in the Tower?” She turns back to look at the portrait. She’d seen another one of these boys, when they were children. They were waifish and scared, gripping each other’s hands tight as they were preparing to depart for the Tower of London. 

“Fifth,” Nicky corrects. “And yes. We were in London when their father died and the Duke of Gloucester declared himself King. We watched them get imprisoned, and then we heard about what was happening to them in the Tower. Two boys. Richard was only ten. They were beaten and starved, locked in a room to freeze in the chill.”

“You got them out.” 

“It wasn’t hard,” Joe murmurs. “Everyone in the Tower wanted them dead. They just had to believe that someone like me,” he waves a hand to his face, “was sent to do the job. And the boys...they knew as soon as I walked into their room what was going to happen. What they thought was going to happen. Ed still stood in front of Richard, as if he could protect him…” He trails off there. He looks up at the portrait, as if confirming that the children he’d seen in that Tower had made it out. They lived well past when history said they died. They _survived._

“We slipped them from the Tower without anyone noticing,” Nicky continues, “and we brought them here. We stayed with them for five years. By then, Ed was old enough to apprentice at a trade. He always had a sharp mind. The brightest boy I’d ever met, in truth. He joined an Inn of Court and became a barrister.”

“You never pushed to get him back on the throne?” 

“There was no stopping Gloucester,” Joe says. “And the boys...they just wanted to be free. They didn’t want to be locked up again or always on the run. They lived and lived well.” 

“And they never betrayed your secret?” 

“Not once.” 

Nile glances at the other portraits on the wall. “Were they all princes?” she asks. 

There’s no denying their smiles as they answer, “No, just one other.” Nicky slips his hand in hers and he guides them from face to face. Some of the children are spread out over hundreds of years. There are seven in total, but he speaks of them all with such joy and love. 

“They died,” she reminds him. 

“All things must die,” he reminds _her._ “I am blessed to have been there to help them when they needed me. To have had the honor of having them in my life. Just as you have been blessed to have a loving family in _your_ life.”

She looks back at the pictures. The last one is the youngest yet. “What was his name?” she asks. 

“Charles,” Joe replies. He pronounces it the french way, rolling the ‘r’ into the ‘l’ and leaving off the 's'. “Louis-Charles.” He touches two fingers to the frame. Melancholy drapes over him like a cloak. “He’s the only one who didn’t grow old.” 

“Why?” 

“He was too hurt, when we found him,” Nicky says. “He was ten, like Richard, but tortured far more than Richard in his captivity.” 

Nile peers closer to the picture, struggling to see if this one was the last prince. It comes to her in a blinding shock. “Louis-Charles...he was Louis XVI’s son?” 

“The younger boy, yes. The _people_ so despised the idea of monarchy that they tortured a child to claim falsehoods against his mother. They beat him until he did not know his own name, nor who he was meant to be. His mother begged for him until the day they took her head, and she never once blamed him for the words they made him say. He never spoke again after they made him sign his mother’s death warrant. Even with us, he was silent as the grave.”

Nile looks up at the portrait. The little brown haired boy, holding a dog to his chest. His dark eyes so lost and sad. He seems to be looking for something just out of sight. There’s a yearning there that cannot be described. She feels her heart break for him. “Was it really that bad?” she asks, knowing they wouldn’t have lied to her. 

“When the doctor smuggled him out to us, he said he had never seen anyone so badly scarred. They whipped him until he could never sit straight. His hand,” Nicky shows on himself, “his hand trembled too much to hold a spoon. We only had him for four years before his heart gave out.”

“But he was happy in those four years,” Joe whispers. “ As happy as I think he could be. We got him that dog, Beau. His legs grew strong enough that he could walk and run. He started to eat with his left hand instead of his right, and didn’t need help as much. He used to come to us, just wrap his arms around our waists and stay there for whole minutes at a time.”

“How do you bear it?” Nile asks. “All this pain. All this loss. How do you...how do you live when your loved ones die without you?” 

“It is our job to help those who are in need,” Nicky tells her. “Sometimes those in need, are the ones we love. And our job is to support them in any way we can. They will not always be perfect. Sometimes they may ask you for something you cannot give. And it is always your choice on how much you feel comfortable giving. But Nile, when the pain is very great, we know we have each other. Joe and Andy and I, we are here for you. No matter what.”

“Unless I betray you,” she murmurs. Nicky flinches. He looks away. Looks toward the portraits on the walls. To Louis-Charles’ yearning expression. To the brown and black faces that bookend the tragic princes. The ones who had just been in the right place at the right time to be adopted by a couple of immortals willing to help. 

Joe touches Nicky’s wrist gently. He threads his fingers through Nicky’s hand. “If Booker wanted to find a way to make _it_ stop,” he says, “Booker could have walked into Merrick’s lab and volunteered himself. We were separated before this mess. Nicky and I were here, taking care of things, and Andy was traveling. None of us had plans to reunite immediately. Booker called us together and set us up. He arranged it so it was Nicky and I who were sent to Merrick’s lab. He only delivered himself and Andy when Copley told him it was necessary. But before that? He had been willing to leave Nicky and I there to be tortured for _his_ benefit.”

“If Booker needs us, even now...I would help him,” Nicky says. “I would not leave him to be harmed. But...until I know he needs me, we need time Nile.”

“He’ll lose Andy in that time,” Nile points out.

“Andy will meet with Booker whenever she wishes to,” Joe replies. “She has no intention on following the banishment.” 

Nile frowns, considering. She asks, “So...if I wanted to see Booker I could too?” 

“If you wish,” Nicky replies. “I ask only that you do not lead him back to us.” 

“And...my family?” 

“As we said. You must make the choice you feel right making. Louis-Charles aside, none of these children grew to resent us. None of them held it against us. They lived long lives, they grew old and grew happy, and they died well. Perhaps it will not always be true, and like Booker—your family will resent you. But it is _you_ who needs to decide if a few more years with them is worth it. The choice, and all its risks, is yours to make.” 

Nile meets Louis-Charles’ sad eyes, as he looks for someone he never saw again.“Do you think his ma really forgave him? For hurting her?”

“Yes,” they say. “She loved him. All she wanted for him, was for him to be safe and happy. To live well. She died wishing he would be all right, but never knowing if he was.” 

Unconsciously, Nile’s fingers touched her cross. She bit her lip, but nodded. “Thank you...for telling me about them...I’d...like to know more about the rest sometime.” But not now. Now her head was filled with even more questions. Some had answers already provided. But others were still nagging and persistent. 

Nicky and Joe didn’t press. They nodded and gesture toward the door. Together, they leave the Briar Patch. They climb back into the car and drive back to London. Nile strokes her cross the whole way. When her father died, her mother had been beside herself. She’d worked endlessly. She’d worked harder than anyone Nile ever met. She did everything to keep them in a good home and a good school. 

So many kids died in Chicago. So many people just never got to leave. There was a school to prison pipeline and there was just no way out. Nile clenches her teeth when she thinks of her brother struggling through the same shit she did. Marching through the same miasma she’d had to drag herself through just to get ahead. She’d joined the marines so she could get into school, and now...now where did that leave her? Where did it leave them? 

Back at the London safe house, Nicky and Joe retreat to their room and Nile goes to hers. She waves hello to Andy on her way by. Andy makes no move to stop her or talk to her. She just nods, like she knew everything all along. It didn’t matter. Not anymore. 

Nile made her decision. 

She closes the door to her bedroom and sits on her bed. She pulls out her phone and looks at her mother and brother’s photo. Then, carefully, she dials Copley’s number. “Copley? It’s Nile...listen, can you get my mom and brother on a plane to London? I’m going to tell them the truth. I want you to list me as Killed in Action, my folks deserve those benefits. But. I’m going to tell them the truth. They deserve to know. I’ll figure it out from there.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found at falcon-fox-and-coyote.tumblr.com
> 
> Feel free to send me requests for this verse.


End file.
